Independent participatory media for Iran

Iran’s Minister of Communications says his ministry has started implementing “smart filtering” by blocking access to “distasteful images” on Instagram. However, this new form of censorship has not yet ended the Iranian government’s wholesale blocking of Facebook and YouTube.

The Fars News Agency reports that Mahmoud Vaezi told reporters that the launch of the first phase of “smart filtering” has been judged a success.

Iranian authorities block many popular websites which the censorship office deems to be inappropriate. Iranian internet users access Facebook and YouTube through the use of proxies.

Smart filtering is a system that the administration has tried to implement in order to allow limited access to websites while blocking access to content that it sees as inappropriate.